Happy Monday! I hope you had an awesome weekend. Mine was spent going to the auction, eating lots of “bad for you” food and splashing in the kiddy pool with my 3 yr old Grandson. Whom i might add is the smartest, cutest, happiest little 3 old boy ever….just had to brag a bit. Back to the post.
Have you ever put off a paint project because you couldn’t figure out a color choice or it was too big or you just simply didn’t know where to start? Well i have, this bedroom set had been siting in storage for about 8 months until i finally decided it was time. My problem was that this bedroom set was beautiful, and would have been perfect just the way it was. I can’t help it though….its like an uncontrollable habit. I have to paint everything. Including this bedroom set.
I chose Annie Sloan, Pure White chalk paint over black. I made the black chalk paint myself. You can see the recipe for home-made chalk paint here.
Originally i was going to stain the tops of the dressers a dark wood stain but then i would have to strip the old stain off first….major project. So instead i decided to just paint the tops black…and I’m so glad i did.
Before i started painting I applied a Decoupage paper to the sides of all the drawers. Just to give the set an added touch of elegance. I confess I have not had too much success with Decoupage however these draw sides seemed like an easy way to better the skill. The paper I used was a pretty tissue paper I found at Hobby Lobby. It was not as thick as wrapping paper but a little thicker than regular tissue paper. The paper went on very easy and using the tools I bought just for this project, it smoothed out perfectly.
Here’s where I goofed up……The draw sides had a layer of polyurethane on them and you could still see all the wood grain. If you notice in the pictures the background on the paper looks white….until i was finished gluing all the sides of the drawers.
After all the Mod Podge was dry i applied a clear spray finish over the top of the paper….big mistake…the clear finish would have been great except that it made the paper translucent and now you could see the wood grain through the paper. It doesn’t look horrible but next time I would first paint the draw sides the color I wanted to show through in this case it would have been white…lesson learned.
Pure White Chalk Paint over Black.
I painted each piece of furniture with the Home-Made Black Chalk Paint 2 times then painted over the Black 3 times with the AS/Pure White. When it came to painting the detailed areas with the white I didn’t worry about getting the paint into all the cracks and corners since I wanted the black to show up a little.
After all the paint had dried and had a day or so to cure I then wet sanded the edges. I use a regular dish scrubby and a sponge. Now for the waxing….you’ve heard it before….wax on, wax off. My arms got a huge workout on this project.
For the hardware I re-used some of the original draw pulls on the big dresser and bought the other ones (on sale) at hobby lobby. I added a little chalk paint to the original draw pulls as they were a dark metal.
I am so with happy how this project turned out and I learned a couple of new things along the way….never a bad thing.
